


Sunburn and Other Agonies of Camping

by firelord65



Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Camp Counselor AU, Dauntless Dependents, F/M, Lots of small background OCs, Richards shows up too, Snuggling, Star Gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 17:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11445240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelord65/pseuds/firelord65
Summary: Tris discovers one of the lesser known duties of Dauntless Leadership mid-summer as she is recruited as a counselor for the dependent day camp. It's a frustrating affair made bearable by another Leader stuck in the same role.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So the intended plan for this fic was for a rather silly concept of a Camp Counselor AU. It was pretty fun to write and let me channel a lot of my old camp vibes into one fic. Basically everything about the camp itself is a throwback to my childhood, so enjoy this unprecedented, veiled look into Fecky's life!

Obscure roles in faction life came as a complete surprise to me when I took on the stripes of being Leader. I had been mentally and physically prepared to be a squadron leader, organizer of a fire brigade, and council to the Abnegation staff who needed to understand the effect of laws on Dauntless life. All these tasks were logical and seemed natural for someone in Leadership to have to figure out.

It was _not_ in the job description to act as camp counselor to a pack of screaming, excited dependents. The whistle around my neck did nothing to curtail their cries, nor did it ever succeed in gathering them up after whatever arbitrary time period had passed. I rued the afternoon “free period” and how it was anything but relaxing for myself and the other adults in charge. I had given Eric a piece of my mind the night at the bar when he dropped the news on me a mere week beforehand. He just laughed and bought my drinks for the rest of the night.

The only saving grace was my partner, Richards, who I strong-armed into the position after I realized I was going to strangle someone if I had to run the craft table by myself. Richards was indifferent both to the task and the dependents were enamored by his stories about the regions beyond the wall he’d driven to on supply runs. I suspected that the Lakemen didn’t actually have stone-and-plank stables with massive horse heads erected on their roofs, but it got me out of explaining how to tie knots in plastic cords.

How I hated the knot tying.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. The camp was only two weeks long _and_ the kids went back to their guardians at night. We were midway through the first week and I had successfully avoided swearing in front of the five-to-tenners.

This afternoon was nearly over, and the scent of dinner cooking was drifting from the retrofitted fairground skee-ball hall that served as the kitchen slash dining room slash activity center when it rained. I struggled to maintain my cheerful demeanor as one of my young charges pile drived into my lap.

“Can you finish my keychain? Its for my aunty and I’m not doing a very good job,” the girl warbled. I recognized her shaking voice and wide eyes for what they were.

Shifting her onto my knees so that I could actually breathe, I counted to five in my head. “Marsha, if I make your keychain for you then I’d have to make one for everyone else,” I explained patiently.

She sniffed and shook the offending plastic threads in front of my face. “But look at it Ms. Tris,” Marsha whined. “It’s like halfway done. I just need’ja to finish it with the loop.”

I clasped my hands around hers and _gently_ brought them down to her knees, away from the danger zone of my eyes. “Well ask me again when it’s more than half finished and we can talk about it,” I conceded. Standing strong and firm was difficult when your lower half was being crushed by a fussing kid.

Sending Richards a quick glance, I began the process of removing Marsha from my lap. Kids could be like barnacles. Once firmly attached, they required a knife to pry them off. Richards meandered over from his side of the table, his hands covered in dried glue and bits of foam. This morning’s craft had been a collage of pre-cut seaside shapes. The original plan had been a bus trip to the lakeshore in Amity until the threat of thunderstorms cancelled the whole excursion.

I was grateful that it hadn’t ended up raining, but now we were down a day of craft ideas. Originally Richards and I had planned on bringing cheap tempera paint and letting the kids paint any interesting rocks they found on the beach.

Yes, this was what his logistics background and my honed Leadership training was being used on - craft projects.

“Marsha, I know that Calvin is really good at gimp. Why don’t you ask him to show you how he goes so fast? I’m sure he has a lot of tips,” Richards suggested. He extended a hand to help her scamper off of my lap. I sighed blissfully when, moments later, the bell down by the dining hall began to ring.

This - and just before lunch - was the only time when the kids would actually hurry to gather up their things and beg to be let go. I checked that no one was running off with the glue container or a project that wasn’t theirs and then threw them into the wild. Whooping as only a pack of children can, the dependants shot off towards dinner. Richards and I finished cleaning up unused foam pieces and cardstock, working in quiet unison.

I placed the glue back in the makeshift cabinets fastened to the outside of an old fried dough stand. Richards paused before handing me the padlock, asking “Do you actually hate doing this?”

My hand fell and I sighed, leaning against the splinter-ridden wood. It was peppered with painted handprints and children’s initials. And paintball spatter from the yearly capture the flag game down here by the old boardwalk. “I don’t hate it,” I admitted gruffly. “I know I’ve been pretty grouchy.”

Richards scoffed, rolling his eyes and handing me the lock now that he had his answer. “Grouchy, yeah that’s the kid-safe word for how pissy you’ve been,” he said. He was being blunt and it hurt my pride.

I bristled and slammed the cabinet door closed. Cinching the lock, I pinched the web of skin between my thumb and fingers by accident. “Mother of _god_ ,” I swore, waving my injured hand in the air. Glaring back at Richards, I addressed his comments. “What would you have me doing, hm? I’m doing my job manning a station. No one’s gotten hurt. I help with headcount every goddamn hour.”

Richards interrupted my rambling excuses. “And you’re freaking miserable while doing it. Do you know what my literal least favorite thing is? Paper cuts,” he explained in a deadpan voice. “Do you know what I smile at and suck up? Getting paper cuts. Because these kids are here for two weeks to have fun with all their dependent buddies before we send them back to going back and forth between school and the literal underground tunnels that we live in.”

Thoroughly cowed, I grimaced and struggled to remain composed. “You’re lucky I take criticism well,” I grumbled. My pride continued to sting even as we started to head towards the dining hall.

He barked a laugh and punched me in the shoulder. “Nah, you’re just lucky you didn’t get the riot act from Kyle instead of me. He has a grudge against Dauntless who can’t get over their tough-guy persona to spend time with the dependents,” Richards said.

“Let me guess, he didn’t have a fun time at camp,” I remarked.

“Worse, his last year he was sick with the flu and didn’t get to go and his final memories are - please note I’m quoting him directly here - some prat officer who purposely kicked their football into an out of bounds area. The officer refused to get it for them and he’s never been the same since,” Richards explained.

I raised an eyebrow. “That explains so much about him somehow,” I admitted. “I swear I won’t drop kick any sporting equipment into a river or whatever.”

Richards stuck out his hand and we shook on my promise. Then I plastered my happiest expression onto my face and joined the rest of the counselors inside to find my table marker. It wasn’t _that_ painful after all. Richards was right. I could be a good sport for the dependents.

It was also a bit easier to keep that grin on when I saw who my counterpart at my dinner table was.

* * *

 

Thursday was somehow easier to tolerate. Friday, too. I knew it had to do with my attitude shift and the fact that I was no longer secretly plotting ways to get Richards to deal with the campers’ questions about painting terra-cotta pots. I wasn’t enjoying myself strictly - the task of monitoring a rotating cycle of danger-prone Dauntless dependents was still frustrating - but I was at least tolerating the upset stomachs and homesickness.

Now was the true challenge: the weekend. All week the camp staff had been on a rotating schedule helping to set up canvas tents on platforms down by the old boardwalk. The old, dried up lake shore was clear of old foundations and debris, making it an ideal place for the campsite. Nothing needed to be done other than routine maintenance of the open plain. I found myself thanking the ancient war for that one, sole gift. Our final task this Friday was to finish cleaning out the fire pit in the center of the tent platforms.

Wiping sweat from my forehead, I paused from moving a heavy flagstone. It was supposed to be smooth with the rest of the sides of the pit but frost heaves had disrupted the sturdy setup. Marlene nodded to me once I was ready, and I pulled the stone up and out of its position. She moved in with her small trowel and frantically dug away at the earth.

My forearms strained from holding the heavy stone up and I counted the beads of sweat that returned to my nose from the effort. “Set!” Marlene chirped, throwing herself back onto her ass to get her hands out of the way. Dropping the stone with a grunt, it took only a few thwacks with the heel of my boot to settle in properly.

“Beautifully done,” an all too familiar voice sounded from above the pit. I wiped off my nose with the my thumb before looking up at Eric. His eyes were hidden by silver sunglasses - not standard issue based on the way they reflected my face back to me.

I stuck my hand up to use him as leverage to get out of the pit. “I’m going to be so sad when we don’t use this for another damn year, aren’t I?” I said, only half joking.

Eric shrugged one shoulder, his free hand coming up to rub the bridge of my nose. I complained and he laughed. “Yeah you’re going to hate it. And stop squirming, you’ve got dirt on your face,” he replied.

Marlene scampered up out of the pit and made a comment under her breath. “What was that?” I asked. I let go of Eric’s hand and suddenly felt self-conscious for having been holding it in the first place. She didn’t answer me, mock saluting the pair of us and disappearing into her assigned tent.

Turning back to Eric, I raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing over here anyway?”

He jerked his head in the direction of one of the tents. “Needed to bring my stuff in for the weekend. It’s a good thing, actually. I also have to tell you about one of the changes,” Eric answered. His tone shifted from casual to his familiar no-nonsense style.

“We’re losing a chunk of the counselors to actual weekend shift duties. I don’t know how the oversight went on for so long before we noticed but it is what it is. What that means is basically your assigned rounds are gonna be twice as long to cover for the people we’re losing,” he explained gruffly.

I nodded, taking it all in stride. “I take it the decision was made so that we’re not losing out on having multiple people awake for rounds?” I asked. Eric grunted in assent.  It wasn’t that big of a deal. Losing four hours of sleep instead of two was a tiny thing. We’d still have backup if one or the other started getting tired during rounds.

I shifted slightly, trying to tell if anyone was paying attention to the pair of us by the fire pit. No one was around from what I could tell, save for Marlene if she was still in her tent. “Are we still on shift together?” I murmured, suddenly fascinated by the fire pit once more.

He barked out a laugh, returning to his casual demeanor. “Asking the important questions, as always,” Eric crowed a little too loudly for my taste. “We are on Sunday night, not tonight or tomorrow though.”

I swallowed to try and dislodge the knot of disappointment in my gut. “That’s good,” I bluffed. “I can only imagine how miserable you’ll be to deal with when sleep deprived. Glad I just have one night to put up with you.”

Eric pressed a palm to his chest and I could imagine the feigned hurt expression behind his mirrored shades. “Your words cut sharper than any blade, Tris,” he said.

It was my turn to shrug, and I did so with a brilliantly cheerful smile.


	2. Chapter 2

Four hours of missing sleep was bearable, if irritating. I leaned heavily on my fellow counselors’ perkiness to corral our charges to the buses. I was sharing a tent with Lexi, one of the girls that I had trained with in the Leadership program. While I had succeeded in securing a position as Leader, Lexi had more or less scraped by the training and only barely qualified for one of the Corporal positions. Still, she was still better than the average Dauntless soldier _and_ knew how to deal with children. That was what mattered for today’s “mission.”

The beach trip was back on and I began the slow process of counting down the miles as we headed towards the lakefront. The nearest gate in the wall wasn’t tremendously close to the campsite we left from, and we ended up needing to backtrack once we passed through into Amity’s territory to get to the lake itself.

It took precisely thirty rounds of beer on the wall before I announced to my bus that “drinking is only for full Faction members” and that included singing about it. The kids stared back at me with varying levels of terror and irritation, depending on their age and whether they knew I was _that_ Leader who stabbed the old Erudite head in the hand two years ago. I wished for just a moment that my reputation was a bit more prolific in the younger spheres of influence.

The singing switched to cheerful tunes about bullfrogs on logs and baby sharks, which was bearable. I suspected that I would have them stuck in my head until the day that I died, but such was life. Richards wasn’t on the trip - he had been one of the essential officers sent back to the city - but I could hear his voice in my head reminding me that everything we were doing was to give these kids a good time.

Lexi didn’t have the stones to stand up to my gag order on the “beer on the wall” song. I knew Richards would have, though. To make up for it, I joined in on a few rounds of songs that I knew from my time as a dependent.

Blissfully, we arrived at the beach and the kids piled out of the buses to scream and run towards the rough, sandy shoreline. I joined the cacophony of whistles to bring them somewhat to order. The call for a headcount went out, and _then_ the kids were free to scamper into the water.

I hauled my gear bag to a wide rock that had a decent enough vantage point on the beach and the water. My carefully packed spare clothes and ammo bandolier had been left at home, replaced by a first aid kit, sunscreen, a towel, and a cap that I’d picked up from one of the surplus shops in the Pit. Sticking the cap on my head, I settled on the rock to nervously watch my kids.

There were ten in mine and Lexi’s tent, all between eleven and thirteen years old. They were terrifying in how truly _fearless_ they were. They dove under the lake’s waves and swam farther out from the shore than I would have ever considered when I was that young and small.

I spotted the twin girls from our tent cajoling another pair of kids into some kind of fight where one sat on another’s shoulders. The pairs scrabbled to knock each other into the water below. I watched carefully for a while until I was satisfied that they were deep enough out that no one was going to hit their head on the bottom of the lake when they tumbled down. It wasn’t our job to interfere unless someone was going to get seriously hurt. If I had grown up in Dauntless like my mother, I wondered if I would have been like these kids, scraped and bruised but gleeful all the same.

My cap was lifted off my head, interrupting my thought process. Looking up, I scowled as Eric dropped it back onto my face. “Thanks,” I grumbled. Fixing it back on my head, I watched as he moved my gear bag to sit down next to me.

“So who do you have in your tent?” he asked. I pointed out the few that I could definitely tell were actually mine and gestured vaguely towards the deeper water. Eric chuckled when I couldn’t remember all their names. “I think you mixed up Kathleen and Katie because I know Kathleen is in Travis’ tent, but I guess you can get away with it since this is your first time really interacting with any of them.”

I nodded and pulled my knees to my chest so that I could rest my chin there. My back was starting to hate me for not finding a better outcropping with a back rest. “There’s too many of them,” I admitted. “I mean, it makes sense since it’s the whole dang Faction worth of kids, but there’s still just a lot of faces to put to names.”

Eric laughed and shook his head. “Did you seriously just say ‘dang?’”

I shoved him with my hand, and he leaned back comfortably onto his elbows. Even as he lounged, I could see through the sides of his sunglasses that his attention was firmly on the kids down in the water. “Richards told me we weren’t supposed to be swearing in front of the kids,” I explained, exasperated.

“It’s still so _dang_ funny,” Eric said, his shoulders moving slightly as he continued to laugh silently.

He sat with me for a good twenty minutes, helping me with my confusion between Katie and Kathleen when the hourly call for a headcount went up. He then left me to my lifeguarding to go set up the massive charcoal grills for lunch, which suited me just fine. I was done with digging out fire pits for this week.

I kicked off my shoes and changed my perch to a different rock so that I could stick my feet in the water. The summer sun was scorching even with my cap keeping it off my head. I was tempted to join some of the other counselors in the water with their kids, but the promise of food coming soon was greater. My attention was torn between the kids out in the deep section of water and the grills; as soon as the first round of burgers were finished, I made the decision to whistle everyone in so that we could eat without worrying about someone drowning.

Naturally, we did another headcount. I reunited with Lexi, having gathered up four out of our ten kids. “You got six?” I asked her. She frowned and shook her head. Blanching, I tried scanning the shore for someone not grouped with their tent-mates. All around were clusters of hungry kids and tired counselors.

I left the four girls that I’d found with Lexi and told her to wait before giving the thumbs down signal that we weren’t all set. “It’s Tomman who’s missing. Check with Charles’ tent. He has friends there,” she reminded me. I focused on breathing normally, trying to keep my rising stress from overruling my better judgement. I spotted thumbs up signs all around from my fellow counselors.

Charles, or Chuck as I knew him, was one of our older lieutenants who spent most of his time working with Candor to address rehabilitation methods for criminal actions. He was a good guy who had his head on straight. I felt much less calm and collected running over to where his campers were. They ignore me eyeing the dully glowing charcoal under the grills with interest.

“Chuck, have you seen Tomman? Little guy, blonde - I think?” I asked. I hoped that my voice wasn’t actually shaking. My nerves felt fried.

“Uhh,” Chuck grunted while he scanned his kids again. “Nah, no I haven’t. I don’t think he was in the water though, if that helps? All my guys were in the shallows with me playing What Time is It Sarge.” I barely listened to the second half whatever he said, already storming off to the next group of campers.

Tomman was nowhere to be found. I gathered the counselors behind the grills, trying to figure out who had seen him last. It appeared that other than the prior headcount, Tomman had vanished from under our collective noses. Also missing was one of the younger girls that I actually recognized from earlier in the week. She had been following around other groups of kids, the kind of hanger-on who didn’t have a lot of friends herself and clung to the hope that if she just stuck with someone long enough, they would keep her around. She’d last been seen heading towards the busses, or so the rumor was.

I relied on Chuck and the other old-guard types to retain control of the situation. Lexi I left to calm down the rest of our campers while I headed off to the buses to try and find Tomman and Christine. My hunger forgotten, I focused on ignoring the churning nerves that were now taking up residence in my stomach.

“Thanks for coming, but you don’t have to babysit me,” I called over my shoulder. I recognized the shadow that started following me the moment I stepped away from the grills. Eric smoothly moved into step next to me, his usual cocky grin absent.

He was worried, I realized as I took in his expression from the corner of my eye. “Don’t take it personally, Tris,” he said flatly. “You’re not the only one who lost a camper. Christine’s in my tent.”

I didn’t reply and matched his increasing pace. The buses were all locked up and the windows were too high up to be climbed by just two kids. Tomman was short; I had to help him up onto his bunk every time he needed to get up there.

Still, Eric and I were of one mind and we didn’t leave the makeshift parking area until we’d unlocked, gone in, and checked under every single seat for the two missing kids. My frustration kicked up another notch when that turned up nothing.

“Where would they have gone from here?” I wondered, trying to think like a Dauntless dependent. The lakeshore was the most interesting thing, I would have thought. Beyond that, this region of Amity consisted of fallow fields out of rotation and some low brush.

Eric put a hand over his eyes and squinted, no longer wearing his sunglasses. “Well they have to be somewhere no further than an hour’s walk since they were both at last headcount. And they _know_ we do them every hour. If I had to bet, they think they have another twenty minutes and are gonna be back around then,” he mused. Still, I wasn’t convinced.

“What if we’re looking in the wrong direction?” I wondered aloud. Empty fields of scrub grass weren’t nearly as interesting to explore as the rocky lakeshore that I was now scanning. The area that we’d been sitting around was the sandiest part, selected intentionally and partially maintained by Amity workers. The rest of the lake’s edge was like the outcropping I’d perched on - large boulders with gullies and tide pools and all sorts of interesting, impossible to spot hiding holes. To top it off, the closest sections were invisible from the beach or even the parking lot from the large swath of brush surrounding the area.

I started off towards the lake once again, spotting a much less travelled but still visible trail that lead in the opposite direction of the nicely groomed beach. Eric pointed out a few scuff marks in the ground as we went along, noting how small they were and as fresh as the footprints we ourselves were leaving.

“We’re on the right trail, I think,” I said between sharp inhales of breath.

“Of course we are. That’s what I was saying,” he retorted. The forced march was tiring, but I shuddered to think how awful I would feel to not be hurrying and discover one of the kids had slipped and hurt themself on a boulder. I might not care tremendously for how reckless and excitable these dependents were, but I also didn’t want them to get hurt.

Eric went ahead of me as the trail narrowed and the shrubs around us grew closer, moving branches aside or outright breaking them to clear the way for our much larger adult bodies. Finally, we emerged on shore, standing atop a boulder taller than both of us combined. To the left was a sharp decline. “That’s too steep for either of them to go down without getting hurt,” I reasoned, earning a nod of agreement from Eric. That left our path to be to the right, even further from the actual beach.

Before moving from our vantage point, I scanned ahead and tried to spot any indication of the two dependents. Eric blew on his whistle, killing my eardrums in the process.

“A warning would have been nice,” I complained, rubbing at my ears. He ignored me, which was fine. Once we found the kids, we would no longer be at one another’s throats. Feelings were less important right now.

Still, my pride demanded that I ignore his offered arm and scoot off of the boulder under my own power. Thankfully high tide had been hours before, but the rocks along the shoreline in this little inlet were slick with mossy growth that retained the wetness all the same. My hands were grimy from clinging to the stones around me as we made our way further along the shore. We no longer had a path of scuffed dirt to follow, but I kept my eyes peeled for scrapes in the moss or a damp handprint like the ones I was leaving on the sides of the stones that hadn’t yet been covered in growth.

The sun was too powerful, I decided. Sweat dripped down my neck and any moisture on the smooth rock face was quickly dried. Eric kept at my back, silent. I held up my whistle, giving him a look over my shoulder, and then blew three hard squawks.

“Ow,” he deadpanned. I rolled my eyes, preparing a comeback that I never would say as I finally heard young voices.

“Oh _shit_.” That was more than likely Tomman and not Christine, but with the rushing of waves only feet away, it was hard to say for certain. I scrambled up the closest, tallest boulder and searched the vicinity with newfound vigor.

Calling out the kids names, I didn’t bother to keep my tone from drifting into the “angry” territory. I _was_ angry. These dependents knew better. The rules were simple; stick close enough to the counselors so that you can show up for headcount. A blonde head bobbed up from a tide pool, vanishing as soon as wide eyes met my squinting, furious ones.

I snapped my fingers to catch Eric’s attention and pointed in the direction of the pool. He would be able to get there quicker as there was no direct route from the boulder I’d jumped up on. He gave me a thumbs up and started off. “You two are coming back to camp, _now_ ,” I snarled, certain now that they could hear me.

“Christine’s ankle hurts,” Tomman whined, risking poking his head out again. I couldn’t see from my perch, but it sounded like he could have been crying. Eric got to the tide pool and his sudden jerk to a stop made me pause before I shouted at the kids again.

Eric’s shoulders lifted and fell - a sigh? He reached down and pulled Tomman up, pausing to wipe under the boy’s eyes. They exchanged quick, quiet words before Tomman darted off towards me. He was as surefooted as a goat, scampering up the slippery, craggy rocks far too fast. No wonder Christine had gotten hurt trying to keep up with him. She was younger and not very graceful even on flat ground.

There was a bit of dirt on his face now and his eyes were red, but there were no tears. I swallowed my sour expression in favor of not making the boy cry again. The lesson had been learned - don’t run off and get hurt. That wasn’t to say that I wouldn’t be keeping a close eye on him for the rest of the weekend, but I was fairly confident that showing a bit of understanding would be more effective than undue sternness. Damn Richards rubbing off on me.

Eric slid down and out of my view. I counted my heartbeats, hating how fast they were going. Tomman edged onto my boulder and wormed his hand into mine. “If you wanted to look at tide pools, you should have asked. I’m sure one of the counselors would have been happy to bring you,” I said.

Perhaps it wasn’t _that_ reassuring, but I could have been a lot more upset. To soften the blow, I added, “I’ll have Lexi ask if anyone else wants to come after lunch. There are burgers and barbecued chicken sandwiches back at the beach.”

Tomman nodded stoically and his mouth turned up at the mention of food. Eric popped back into view, now touting a giggling Christine atop his shoulders. He held on to her knees to keep her steady, one foot missing a shoe and wrapped up in a bit of elastic bandage. I was grateful once again of all the random miscellany that Eric carried around in his pockets; I hadn’t even thought of grabbing a first aid kit.

I turned and looked at Tomman, nudging him with my elbow. “Come on, kid. Let’s go eat before I turn into dust from hunger,” I teased.


	3. Chapter 3

There was nearly a mutiny when it came time to leave the lake. A core group of older dependents had decided that if they just didn’t get on the bus then we didn’t get to leave. After all, the lake was too much fun. It wasn’t fair that they only got to go for one day.

Concessions were made. No one had to be forcibly brought onto the bus. We would return tomorrow for a second day at the beach, this time bringing some tent poles and tarps to have shaded areas. My shoulders and the back of my neck resented the fact that we hadn’t thought about it in the first place. Also that I never re-applied sunblock when I hopped in the water to play games with the dependents.

I spent my four hours on rounds slathering on aloe and trying to move as little as possible. That was a difficult intersection of desires as the point of rounds was to continually move around the campsite and surrounding area looking for misbehaving campers and unwanted visitors. Occasionally, I was told, the recent Dauntless-born Initiates liked to pop by and see their old friends in the middle of the night.

I didn’t see much going on other than a few too many flashlights flickering inside of the tents as the dependents whispered to one another instead of sleeping. Smacking the canvas of the tent close to them made them either shriek or frantically click off their lights as they feared retribution. The shriekers got a sleepy “bedtime is now-time” from whichever one of their counselors slept lighter, and the others got berated by their friends to be less scared of the dark.

By the time morning came around, my brain and body were all too happy to remind me that I was missing eight hours of rest. Lexi napped on the bus ride back out to the lake, and I fought back growing resentment. Her rounds were only two hours a night on account of her lower rank. I made a mental note to change that rule for next year. This wasn’t a protection detail. Everyone was equally as capable of catching clumsy ten year olds.

Piling out of the bus once again, I told Lexi to do headcount while I busied myself with unloading the extra supplies that we’d brought today. She huffed at the way that I barked at her, but such was life. The grills were still dug into the ground, charcoal remnants raked out. We had left them as a gift for Amity in thanks for letting us take over for the weekend. I was just glad that we didn’t need to haul them off the bus this morning.

A few mosquitos lingered in the early morning haze, not yet fully dissuaded by the direct sun. I swatted one off my arm and cringed as my burned skin protested. The sun shelters were easy to set up. Yet still more supplies were coming off the bus that I didn’t recognize until they were fully set up.

“We have volleyball nets?” I asked Veronica. She tugged on the supporting tie down lines, checking that the net wouldn’t fall down the first time someone hit it with a ball.

Veronica smirked. “Of course we do. What faction did you think sponsored all the sport programs while you were at school?” She wasn’t being cruel in her teasing. I liked Veronica. She was a Leader like myself, originally one of the support staff in the prior to the shift of power that happened two years ago. Her promotion had been smooth and painless, expected even.

“I never played. At least not after school. During phys ed, sure, but I didn’t get to join any of the club teams,” I recalled. I didn’t really mind growing up, but now in Dauntless I felt a slight pang of loss once again for what my younger self could have been like growing up here. Would I have liked volleyball?

I had to stretch to catch the ball that was chucked in our direction, my fingertips scrabbling on the white leather. It bounced and I lunged to catch it properly the second try. Veronica gave me another bright smile. “You’ll pick it up. Maybe let the kids serve though.”

* * *

 

My head pounded and my wrists ached. I had definitely picked up another layer of misery to my sunburn collection. Throwing in the towel, I begged off from the all-counselor game and retreated to one of the canopies.

The one I selected just happened to have Eric in it.

I dropped gracelessly next to him and groaned. “I’m dying,” I complained. “This is the end. Deathbed confessions, give ‘em.” Something was digging into my back.

That made him laugh. I loved the sound, especially when I was the cause for it. We were the only ones under the canopy. Most of the kids were either watching the staff game with rapt attention or under Chuck’s watchful gaze in the water.

Eric tipped his head to look at me. “You do know that the person that’s dying is the one giving the confessions, right?” He teased.

I waved his comment away. “You’re just trying to get out of declaring your undying love for me. It’s fine. I understand completely. You have to stand stoic at my graveside to finally admit it,” I sighed.

Being out of the sun was helping my head. I tugged my cap off and dropped it over my face to make everything that much darker in front of my closed eyes. I heard shuffling next to me and felt a body lay down next to me. Eric and I’s shoulders were touching, though my feet had to be a good half foot higher than his. “So when you do die, should I tell the faction that the glorious Tris Prior was brought down by a lowly summer camp game of volleyball?” His voice sounded funny at this angle.

I sighed again. “Nah,” I said after a moment of thought. “You need to elaborate. Keep the summer camp thing but I want to have been killed by my grave wound acquired fighting a rabid mountain lion that was stalking a helpless tent of children.”

“So from sunstroke to deadly beast. Got it,” he confirmed. “Did you kill the lion?”

“ _Obviously_ ,” I snorted. My straight face was pretty much spent though, and I laughed with my next comment. “I brought it back on my shoulders so that you could stuff it and put it over Kyle’s desk.”

I felt Eric nod next to me before shifting again. I no longer felt his shoulder next to mine. “He would have wanted it that way,” Eric said. He was on the edge of snickering, too.

We devolved into stupid giggles for a few moments as I voiced my mental image of Kyle saluting the beheaded mountain lion every morning when he got into the office. I felt my cap being lifted off of my face and frowned.

Squinting only one of my eyes open, I tried to discern what new torment Eric was concocting. Metal and glass moved in front of my face, and I yelped when the struts of Eric’s sunglasses stabbed into my ears instead of going over them.

“You put them on then, geeze,” he said, his arm flopping uselessly onto my stomach. I fixed the frames, pleased with how less warm it was than the canvas-like cap.

I mocked him first for his completely ridiculous use of the word “geeze” and then thanked him. I enjoyed the companionable silence that fell between us. There was a hearty breeze coming in under the canopy that felt blissful on my scorched skin. Eric’s arm was warm but not unbearably so, rather like a blanket.

My brain told me to seize this moment, to take advantage of the quiet and the privacy and actually talk with Eric. But even as the mind was willing, the body was not. The darkness still spun slightly, and I thought that just a few more minutes would give me the strength to open my mouth and talk about the lingering, quiet moments that I began to long for. _With him_ , a small thought burned. _Quiet moments with Eric_.

I remember opening my eyes one more time when I heard the headcount whistles go off. I didn’t get up, though. Eric tapped me on the shoulder and murmured that he’d find my tent, too. Then, my warm spot left me, and I drifted back into the haze of my afternoon nap.

* * *

 

Final rounds. The last stretch before… well before an entire Monday’s worth of camp events and _then_ I would be able to sleep for an entire eight hours. Veronica confirmed on the bus ride back from the lake that there would be only a “quick staff meeting” on Monday evening and then we would be free to go back home to sleep. Hallelujah.

This night had a lot of the same. Walking around behind the tents. Looping back by the fire to grab some of the foil-wrapped camp food that had been cooking on the fire. Tonight the kids had gotten to stay up an extra hour as we made “choco-tacos,” which were tortillas filled with chocolate slabs and globs of marshmallow. They sat on the edge of the fire pit, melting and toasting, until someone dared to pull them out. So long as the kids grabbed, pulled, and let go, they were allowed to remove the tacos.

So naturally someone dared Tomman to hold onto his for as long as he could before dropping it. The campers lost fire privileges and the remaining tacos were removed by Chuck. The extra ones were left by the dying fire to stay warm for those of us on rounds. I picked at mine, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the sheer sweetness of it.

Still, it was something to do as Eric and I watched for non-existent ne’er-do-wells. Everyone was too exhausted from the second day of sun and fun to try and break the rules. I was grateful when our four hours finally wrapped up at two AM. Our replacements blearily nodded from their seats by the fire pit.

“C’mere,” Eric murmured, leading away from the warmth of the fire and promise of sleep. Curious, I followed him. We left the tents behind and re-entered the remnants of the boardwalk.

I asked him where we were going, and he gave me a cryptic answer of “wait and see.”

Shaking my head and muttering under my breath, I wondered if I was going to be able to stay awake for the journey back. Eric’s path took us away from the main drag of the boardwalk and into the side streets that had once held storefronts and apartments on the floors above. He brought us to a stone building that had once been dwarfed by the impossibly towering skyscrapers of the city. Now it remained stalwart and silent against the destruction and decay around it.

I had once tried to enter the church during a training exercise and been stymied. Eric fished a keyring from his pocket and I laughed out loud. “Thousands of buildings in this city that are broken down messes, and you have the key to this one just in your pocket?” I said, amazed.

He lifted a shoulder, a cocky grin splayed across his face. “I’m just that good,” he crowed. The door opened with a wheeze and a groan. I wondered how long it had been since anyone had actually entered the space with the intention of attending service.

I clicked on my flashlight now that we could not longer rely on the moon’s light. It illuminated the foyer and gracefully bowed wooden archway that lead into the sanctuary proper. “Didn’t peg you for the church-going man,” I remarked quietly. The very air felt oppressive and I didn’t dare speak louder than a whisper. There were ghosts here. Those who gathered here would be as strangers to us even with our attempts to retain their beliefs.

Those who shared the faith didn’t fall into neat boxes of “Lutheran” rather than “Episcopalian.” The past rigidity of Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism fell away into a melting pot of beliefs. The gathering of believers that my parents belonged to differed from the one three blocks down in Abnegation in subtle and meaningful ways.

They wouldn’t belong in this building and neither did I.

Eric gestured towards a set of stairs to the side of the entryway, avoiding entering the abandoned sanctuary. “It’s just a building to me,” he murmured. Despite his insistence neither of us spoke again. The stairs wound up into an old balcony that looped about the sanctuary. However the once-mighty star of the space was the pipe organ, now a decaying corpse. Oxidation dug deep into the copper coating on the pipes, peeling off in green sheets to expose the orange and black pitted lead beneath.

Our path led to a small maintenance hall behind the organ, following the long bass-tone pipes that wound on for massive lengths. From there, Eric shoved open a hatch and we emerged once more into the starlit night.

The air felt clear and crisp, the humidity reduced for a few glorious hours. I sucked in a deep breath and let go of the quiet reverence that I’d clung to the moment we entered the church. Elbows dropped onto my shoulders as Eric used me to support him. It was one of his favorite things to do when I was sitting at my desk or he was behind me in the cafeteria line. “Shit,” he said suddenly. “I forgot to bring the blanket.”

“The what now?” I asked, tipping my head back to try in vain to meet his eyes. Between my height and the way he was standing, it was a lost cause.

Eric exhaled, grumbling under his breath as he did. His elbows moved off and he instead took my hand into his. He lead me along the edge of the roof until we were where the building shot off into an addition. The roof here was flat, and we could walk without dealing with the steep angle of the sanctuary’s arched ceiling.

He tipped his head and sat down on the roof. His hand tugged me down to meet him. “I know this roof isn’t going to come collapsing down on us, but I think it _is_ going to be cold. So I was supposed to bring a blanket,” Eric explained.

I nudged him with my elbow, moving his arms out of the way. “I’ll just use you as a buffer and you’ll learn for next time,” I said. His stomach made a decent pillow and I could marvel at the sky spread out above us without craning my neck.

“Next time, eh?” he chuckled. “You’re making assumptions there, Prior.”

Lifting one shoulder, I replied, “Hey, even if you’re bringing some other girl up here, you’ll still have learned to actually bring the blanket. Besides don’t you remember? I’m dying.” I think I confused him as he didn’t get the joke for several long seconds.

“You know, from earlier-,” I started to explain. He spoke at the same time as I did.

“Oh yeah, you’re giving your deathbed confessions of how much you secretly resent me.” His joke rang with a bitterness that wasn’t normally there in our joking and teasing. I chewed on my lip and starting to twist to actually meet his gaze.

He stopped me, tapping my shoulder and then pointing up to the sky. “There they are! Did you see that one?” I squinted, not seeing anything different in the clear night air.

Dark shadows flitted around, visible only when they passed between a star’s light and our position. “The bats? Do they live in the church? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bat like in person before,” I said.

I felt him shaking his head no through the back of my head. “Not the bats, but we’re going to re-visit your childhood. Never seen a bat before? Jesus Christ,” Eric breathed. “No, look up between the stars. There are meteors. They come and go in the blink of an eye but…”

My attention refocused on the stars above us. The moon was bright, sitting fat and mostly full in the sky, and its light washed out the perfect darkness of space. Still, I lay with baited breath, scouring the expanse for any sign of the meteors.

“There!” I squeaked, surging up from my human pillow to point frantically. Eric hummed in acknowledgement, much more subdued than I was. I settled back down slowly. I didn’t want to blink, and moving made the stars blur in my eyes.

We watched in reverent silence for a few more minutes, pointing and gasping as the night sky flourished with the falling stars. A particularly bright meteor cascaded across the horizon, its tail seemingly stretching for miles.

“That was beautiful,” I whispered. If anyone saw us up here, a pair of “bloodthirsty Dauntless,” starry eyed and whispering, they would think they were in a sim. Hell, even I wasn’t convinced that I wasn’t still asleep on the lake shore, Eric’s arm wrapped snug around me and his forehead pressed against my cheek.

The thought sent a surge of warmth though my stomach and then my cheeks. That had _happened._ I hadn’t dreamed it. And I wasn’t dreaming now, either. Clearing my throat, I shifted on Eric’s chest. I rolled to face him, one hand tracing patterns on the stone and the other resting on my neck to hide the way that my heart pounded in my throat.

“Deathbed confession time,” I whispered.

“Hm?” Eric murmured. He lifted his head to look at me, confusion evident as he tipped his face slightly.

I cleared my throat again to dislodge the knot there. “Eric, I don’t hate you,” I finally managed to say.

He stared at me, his face going through a series of rapid expressions. He finally settled on a wry grin. “Well, Prior. I’m touched. Half a year on the job together and you finally tell me that you don’t despise my guts. That means something deep,” Eric joked.

I swatted his shoulder and closed my eyes for lack of a better way to avoid looking at him - without leaving his warmth that is. “Shut up, I’m not done,” I growled. I sucked in a deeper breath. Eyes still squarely shut, I gritted out, “I can’t possibly hate you and I _know_ that you worry about it. That I just put up with you because there’s no getting rid of you.”

“Candor did try awfully hard, you have to give them credit,” he said, his tone drier than my mouth.

My hand gripped his shirt lightly. I still couldn’t open my eyes and meet his gaze. I felt him shift again. Looking back up at the sky, I think. “You’re not just a pain. I enjoy spending time with you. I don’t have to tell you that you’re a decent guy. I think that you’re afraid that I don’t see that. And I do. It’s impossible not to see how good a person you are. Especially when you are the fun, goofy guy that the kids all want to be friends with and I’m the awkward, unapproachable one,” I said. My voice was getting stronger. My heart still pounded like I was running a marathon, though. It was impossible to tell that thing to be reasonable.

“Well thank you,” he said simply. I sighed as I felt his fingers card gently through my hair. He relaxed under me, tension fading even as began to wind up more and more.

Encouraged by how well he was taking everything that I had to say, I pried one eye open to take in his expression. Eric was staring up at the sky, his forehead furrowed. He did that when he was chewing over the same thought over and over. “I’m not done,” I blurted out. If I didn’t finish what I had to say, didn’t take advantage of this moment of quietness, who knew when I would have the chance again?

“You don’t have to tell me what I want to hear, Tris,” Eric intoned carefully. A warning.

I pushed up, away from the soft touches and away from his chest. I had to _look_ him in the eye to tell him this. “Will you just let me tell you that I care for you? God, Eric, I could never resent you and it hurts that you would think even just a little bit that I might,” I said. My voice broke and I had to clear my throat to be able to get the rest of the words out.

“I need you to know what moments like these,” I gripped his hand fiercely in mine, ”mean to me. I treasure the few minutes and seconds that we get to spend together during the day. I don’t know when or how, but I just know deep down somewhere between my brain or my gut or whatever that if I couldn’t ever spend another minute with you like this, it would kill me.”

He looked at me with stars in his eyes, wonder and amazement wiping away the earlier confusion. I was rambling now. I needed to be sure that he understood. “It’s ridiculous and I know in another week you could be bringing someone else up here to watch the shooting stars, and well-”

I couldn’t spit out the rest of my thoughts because Eric had lurched forward and pressed his lips to mine. His hands trembled slightly. I knew because they jittered against my chin as he cupped my face in them. I threw my arms around him. Elation and surprise and absolute relief flooded through my body, cascading down in a wave.

Frantically, I matched the depth and need in his kiss. He paused only to sit up onto his knees and wrap one arm about my torso, pulling me against him as tight as possible. I broke away first to suck in a breath, laughing to myself as Eric didn’t let me budge an inch from his embrace. He flushed, untangling his other hand from my hair - I hadn’t noticed its new location and now I missed the sensation.

“Tris, please stop joking about dying. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you were gone,” he said. I didn’t need to see his face to hear the genuine ring of truth in his words. I pressed my forehead to his. My every fear and reservation faded away as I breathed in his soap, the way his eyes met mine, the gentle grip about my waist that kept me secure in his arms.

Eric let out a half-hearted laugh trying to cover up for how exposed we both were. “And no other girl is coming up here to watch the stars with me. That’s our thing, now,” he promised.

“Ours,” I breathed. “I like that word.”

I pressed my lips against his. He was mine. And I was his. It felt right to be here, alone with the moon and stars.

This night was ours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment below with thoughts. Favorite line, interesting concept, etc!  
> Also check out the other fics in the Summer Swap challenge for more Eris goodness.
> 
> Feel free to follow my writing blog at [feckyeswriting](http://feckyeswriting.tumblr.com). I post about current WIPs and other random writerly goodness there. Cheers!


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